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New Leaders and those embarking on New Leadership Roles

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Thousands of people who are fabulous at their job, popular with colleagues and peers, manage to maintain a smile Monday through to Friday and to top it all, they deliver on almost every aspect of their job description. These people often find themselves thrust forward to promotion or encouraged to apply for the promotion process and are often rewarded with it.

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This however, does not mean that they are leaders or ready for leadership. Sound familiar? Know anyone like this? Is this you? Soon after taking on the new role several things often happen to you:

  • Impostor syndrome

  • A fear and lack of knowledge about how to use authority effectively.

  • The battle of leadership within a team of former peers or friends.

  • How to motivate your team and implement the vision and strategy of an organisation.

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If these initial challenges aren’t managed, discussed openly, or worked through then I can guarantee you what will follow:

  • Your isolation: The distance in every aspect, between you and your team will grow.

  • Followed very quickly by paranoia: "What are they saying about me when they’re all together after our team meeting"?

  • To counter that you become aggressively authoritative: This is the “I’ll show them who's Boss” attitude to getting things done. This obliterates empathy, humanity, collaboration and a cohesive working team spirit.

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All of this will definitely result in:

  • All-round dysfunction

  • All-round resentment

  • Your exhaustion

  • Team apathy

  • An inability to retain team members for any period of time.

  • Your confirmed belief that leadership is based on being lonely, involves being brutal to get things done, isolating, You have to be unpopular in order to maintain seniority and ultimately, in order to appease bosses above me, I actually end up doing a lot of the work myself.

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You’re told that this is all part of Leadership. You have to put up with it because "you’re in a certain pay band, this is the price you pay for your own office, great salary, weekends off" etc.

 

Let me tell you - This does not have to be true and should never be true.

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If you’re in this position, or you’re acutely aware that this could be coming down the track in your new role, then please read on. I can assure you if you launch into this new season un-prepared the above is going to befall you.

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With EAGLE Transformational Coaching, we will coach you to discover why this transition into leadership is going to be critical.

90% of 1,300 Senior HR professionals surveyed agreed that, transitioning into new leadership roles are the most challenging times in the professional lives of leaders.

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EAGLE Transformational Coaching will coach you through a programme of development in strategic and crucial areas of launching.

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Prepare yourself. Taking that mental break from the old and getting ready to take charge of the new.

 

Accelerate your learning. Climb that learning curve ASAP in the new role. Get a grasp of markets, product, systems, tech, structures, cultures, politics etc. This is often describes as drinking from a fire-hose. EAGLE Transformational Coaching structures your thoughts and helps you to create this process systematically and logically.

 

Strategy versus Situation. Does your understanding of why you are now in this role, why you were appointed, on what merit, talent, expertise has planted you here, right now match the situation that you are actually going to work in? EAGLE Transformational Coaching will coach you so that you can create a clear diagnosis of strategy vs situation which will be a key requisite for developing any action plan as a leader.

 

Secure early wins. These build your credibility and create a momentum that is manifest in the wider belief that ‘something is happening’, EAGLE Transformational Coaching will coach you to be able to perceive opportunities for these wins to leverage energy; contagious cycles of energy coming from your leadership to your team and beyond.

 

Negotiate Success. Even in leadership, most leaders still have a boss. This relationship is going to be key for you. So, it’s paramount that you have a positive working relationship with that person or group of people. EAGLE Transformational Coaching will coach you to be able to deliver to ‘the boss’ those series of critical conversations about your situation, shared expectations, working styles, resources and your personal development. Also, and crucially, it means developing and gaining support for your strategic intent.

 

Build your Team. If you’re inheriting a team, you’ll need to evaluate, align and mobilise its members. You may also need to restructure it to better meet the demands of the situation. You may need to make tough early personnel calls and your capacity to select the right people for the right job is going to be key if your vision, role and leadership are to succeed. EAGLE Transformational Coaching will coach you to be both strategic and systematic in approaching and meeting the team-building challenge.

 

Create Coalitions. New leaders and New leadership roles success will also depend on your ability to influence people outside of your direct line of control. EAGLE Transformational Coaching will coach you in clarity in identifying those whose support is essential for your success and figure out how to line them up on your side.

 

Keep your Balance. In the personal and professional tempest of transitioning into new leadership or leadership role you must work heard to maintain your equilibrium and preserve your ability to make good judgments. The risk of losing perspective, becoming isolated and making bad calls are ever present during transitions. EAGLE Transformational Coaching can coach you to accelerate your personal transition and to gain more control over your work environment. EAGLE Transformational Coaching will be the right advice-and-counsel network and an indispensable source to achieve this.

 

Accelerate Everyone. Finally, you need to have the skill and intuition as a leader to help all people in your field and organisation; direct reports, peers, bosses and stakeholders to accelerate their own transitions. The fact that you’re in transition means that they are too. The quicker you can get your new direct reports up-to-speed, the more you will help your own performance. Beyond that, with EAGLE Transformational Coaching, you will quickly discover the potential of your leadership and the benefits that will be manifest in your organisation and everyone connected to it. The potential is vast.

Established Leaders on-boarding to new Leadership Roles

Whether you’re an established leader or indeed, you answer to one, it is unlikely that you’ll be limited to receiving or delivery of one style of leadership. Effective leaders will move seamlessly between management styles as the situation demands in order to get the most out of their team.

 

However, do you feel like you’re leading a team who have stopped achieving targets, or milestones are now being missed? As an established leader, with the usual pressures coming from bosses above, it maybe very tempting to lay the blame at the feet of your team. Siting lethargy, unclear objectives, team retention issues, lack of resources. The list in endless.

 

Let me tell you an intuitive leader will firstly look inwardly. Perhaps your leadership style is not right for the current situation? Perhaps it never has been? By accepting this possibility your leadership has just opened the door to solutions.

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EAGLE Transformational Coaching coaches established leaders in this and similar challenges of leadership to create an ability to reflect on their style of leadership and make necessary changes which will pave the way for success.

 

So many established leaders are blind to the affect of their immovable style of leadership and often are oblivious to the affect that this is having upon productivity and potentiality of a team. This acknowledgment will be a huge step for some. Once accepted we can coach through some of the advantages of changing and adapting your leadership styles.

 

Relentlessly ploughing ahead with one leadership style regardless of the context is a sure-fire way to alienate your team and see morale plummet. If you’re learning to become adaptive, then you will bring people into the fold and help them, thus you, to succeed.

 

EAGLE Transformational Coaching coaches you to become an effective and adaptive leader. You can become an adaptive leader and create a success-led workplace.

 

Your team grow accustomed to challenges being addressed and resolved rather than ignored or used as the bias for blame. This will result in people respecting you, the leader and your leadership. They will begin to feel valued and keyed into the visions and strategies of the organisation. There will be natural opportunities for dialogue between you, your team and your peers and a more tangible synergy.

 

With EAGLE Transformational Coaching developing your adaptive leadership style, you will also be able to scale your involvement so that your management remains effective, overarching goals remain consistent regardless of team size changes because the time you must spend on individual team members will change.

 

Overall, adaptive leadership fosters healthy and consistent self-development as it relies on you looking inward, reflecting on your short-falls and making the refinements required for success.

 

In short, its not just the organisation that benefits from successful and adaptive leadership, its also the leader and the people they lead as well.

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-Nicholas Witherick

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